Millennium Witch.

Chapter 3-3- Magic
“Yvette”.

“Yvette”.

"Yvette!"

Li You sensed someone speaking beside him in an unfamiliar language, yet he seemed to be able to understand it.

He opened his eyes and found himself lying in a bed. In the doorway, a slightly blurry figure stood there, looking at him and saying, "Hmm, finally awake. How did you sleep last night? Is the bed comfortable?"

“…Me?” Li You looked at the slightly blurry and transparent figure in front of him and realized that it was a strange woman wearing a white coat.

"Yes, who else would be in this room?" the female figure said with a smile.

"Hmm... I can sleep here..." Li You said, glancing around. The room's layout seemed familiar; although the fluorescent vines were gone, it was exactly the same room he had woken up in on the ninth underground floor. Considering the phantom he was talking to, the answer seemed obvious.

He traveled back to the past in the form of hallucinations or dreams!

Is it because of the fog on the tenth basement level?

Did he fall asleep in the fog and connect with the history of this underwater facility?

It doesn't sound very scientific, but it seems like that's the only way to make that connection!
"I'm fine as long as you can sleep here," the female figure said. "It'll be breakfast time soon, so hurry up and change your clothes and get ready to wash up."

“Oh, okay…” Li You nodded obediently like an ordinary little girl. He answered in Chinese, while the hazy woman used a foreign language. Yet, they could understand each other, which was undoubtedly evidence of a dream.

Seeing Li You get out of bed, the woman left. Li You peeked around the door for a while, and soon heard her talking to other children from the doorway of the next room. This gave him a rough idea of ​​the woman's identity—she was either the dormitory supervisor or a teacher…

So this is actually a boarding school?
Perhaps because it was a dream, everyone appeared slightly transparent and hazy, like NPCs in a game, which didn't create too much tension for Li You.

He found a blue children's uniform, underwear, shoes, and socks in the closet of the room. Then, through the half-length mirror on the inside of the closet, he saw a little girl with long silver hair and dark red eyes, quietly looking at him in the mirror.

The girl had delicate and beautiful features, a slender figure, and wore children's clothes that seemed completely out of place with her temperament, making her look like a beauty who had stepped out of a painting. Slowly, she gave Li You a faint smile, which looked somewhat awkward but was also very endearing.

After a tense standoff with the little girl in the mirror for more than ten seconds, Li You stopped his awkward smile and looked at the silver-haired, red-eyed girl in the mirror who had also regained her expression. He wondered if this was what he looked like now.
So beautiful! I didn't even realize it at first; I thought I was seeing a ghost... And how should I put it? Although I'm very unhappy about being transmigrated into the wrong gender, thankfully the original owner wasn't ugly, so it's not unacceptable to me...

Forget it, now is not the time to think about these trivial matters!
Shaking his head, Li You changed his clothes and left the room. He went with the children's troop to wash up, eat breakfast, and finally went to a small classroom to wait for the morning class.

During the roll call in the morning class, Li You finally learned his own name, or rather, the original owner's full name.

“Yvette Loshivia”.

"arrive."

She raised her hand and said to herself, "From this moment on, I am Yvette Losivia."

……

After roll call in the morning class, the first lesson was a Chinese language class, which taught a language from another world called "Black Tide Language". However, the teaching method was very special - all the children had to enter the computer room, lie on a specially made metal chair, wear a helmet-like device, and then learn on their own in the virtual world by following the guidance program.

Unable to determine when the dream would end, Yvette was exceptionally focused during this learning process and was also amazed by the head-mounted device in this world, which was simply virtual reality from science fiction novels.

However, to prevent students from getting distracted, there are restrictions on access permissions in the teaching mode, locking out most functions. This prevented Yvette from getting much information, only knowing that it was a "head-mounted visual terminal" and accompanying teaching software produced by a company called "Gravity Group", and that it used an unfamiliar technology called "Rune Group".

"Rune...set?"

As she pondered the word, Yvette guessed that the technology tree of this world might be quite different from what she had imagined.

After class, before lunch, all the children have to undergo a physical examination, and the medical room is in the room next to the classroom.

During the queue, Yvette obtained some specific information by asking other children.

“You’re saying this isn’t a school?” Yvette asked in surprise. “You don’t know?” The one who spoke was a little girl at the front of the line, also a semi-transparent phantom. “This is the ‘Ish Mountain Black Tower Research Center’… You didn’t get in here because you have a genetic disease?”

"Genetic disease? What's that?"

"I don't know. Before they brought me here, the director said I had this disease and that it would flare up when I grew up, so I had to come here for long-term treatment," the little girl said.

"Who is Grandpa Dean?"

"The director of the orphanage I used to live with."

"Oh oh..."

Soon, after making inquiries from various sources, Yvette finally pieced together a relatively clear picture of the situation here—

This is a research center belonging to the super pharmaceutical company "Black Tower Pharmaceuticals". Because it is built underwater in the dark, it is often called "Abyss Base".

In response to the government's call to provide free health checkups for children in many orphanages, the company discovered that many orphans suffer from a special genetic defect. In order to research and develop a cure for these rare and incurable diseases, the company has partnered with various orphanages to bring the affected children there for long-term observation and treatment.

The lake outside is a huge crater lake. The entire Abyss Base is built on top of this extinct volcano called "Mount Ish." According to the staff here, Mount Ish last erupted tens of thousands of years ago, and the magma chamber below has completely solidified, posing no risk of eruption.

But what happened next that caused everyone here to die, with monsters roaming outside and only the original owner seemingly still alive inside...

Images from many classic works flashed through Yvette's mind.

Could it be that they are researching some terrible biological weapon here, using the children in the orphanage as test subjects, and that the virus leaked, contaminating the entire base along with the crater lake outside?

The reason why no outsiders have come to clean up or collect the bodies at this base for so long is because of the spread of the virus, and no one dares to come.

What about the original owner?

The original owner was able to wake up unharmed in the base, perhaps not because of the time travel, but because she mutated and became the only person who could adapt to the virus.

Or even the original virus?

Okay, this is getting a bit too far off. This isn't Resident Evil or Prototype... Yvette stopped her wild thoughts and followed the other children into the examination room one by one.

The physical examination process is not complicated and does not require lifting clothes. You just need to stand on a testing machine for a while and have some blood drawn.

After leaving the room, Yvette saw the woman guarding the door and said, "Dr. Tebbsa, may I ask you a question?"

Tebissa is the lady who wakes them up in the morning and then takes them to the computer lab for classes. She seems to have originally been a researcher here, but was temporarily reassigned to be the children's caregiver. Her full name is Tebissa Clovis.

Upon hearing Yvette's question, she said gently, "Yes, what is your question, Yvette?"

“What are runes?” Yvette asked.

“Oh, this,” Tebbsa said. “It is the foundation for magical research and the cornerstone of human civilization. Simply put, it is like individual dots that, when combined, become you, me, all kinds of matter, all kinds of magical elements, and everything in the universe.”

"……magic?!"

"Yes, it's magic. You should be familiar with this word, right? I see a lot of kids these days who want to be great magicians when they grow up."

"Can I start learning magic now?" Yvette asked quickly.

"Now? Don't rush it. First, focus on mastering your Chinese language. When you get older, you'll naturally encounter courses like rune compilation, but you might not even like them then," Tebbisa said with a smile.

(End of this chapter)